Bespoke Conviction

I’ve been looking at the relationship between rebellion, belonging and conformity and how these can exist alongside one another without being contradictory. This was the inspiration behind making a black cutoff denim with anarcho and crust punk band patches and a quilted floral lining.

I never did make a proper crust jacket and publicly swear allegience to all my favourite bands so this was quite a fun and nostalgic project to work on. I had been looking to make some work which made a clearer reference to what the punk patches are all about and this project felt like it helped to do that. It also threw up something interesting about the nature of making a bespoke item of clothing without being too serious about itself.

This point of balance between rebellion and conformity feels even more charged in relation to the riot grrrl movement because girls were not only fighting against the contraints of society at large but also against constraints within the punk scene. I wanted to find a way to represent this process of people finding their voices through diy and punk culture but treating this as a critical process and making it their own.

I also wanted to look at the balance between being tough and strong-willed but having an underlying fragility, and how rebellion doesn’t have to mean rejecting your sense of feminity or your past.